Blog- 3Most Effective leadership and Management style

Blog-3: Most Effective Leadership and Management Styles and Approaches

Business managers have started moving away from autocratic approaches that emphasize on command and control an individual to consultative and participative leadership approaches that engage and inspire the employees to contribute for the organization’s objectives. However, most of the experts also feel that there is no and wrong approach in the business. Every leadership approach can be made use very effectively depending on the situation and circumstances. In our class we did Ricardo case study and learnt how Ricardo change his father’s Autocratic style and bring Democratic leadership style and he become very successful in his business. The video link It clearly tells us about management and leadership differences. Please watch the video below:

Similarities and Differences between Management and Leadership

Management is a process of formulating and implementing business goals based on the organizational resources and analysis of internal and external markets (Jeffs, 2008). On the other hand, leadership is a process of social influence that drives individuals towards an accomplishment of a common goal. Another difference is that whilst the management function spells out the direction, envision of the future and develop the strategies, the leadership helps in communicating goals to employees, making them embrace the goals and inspiring them to contribute to the organization. When leadership thinks about the ideas that help executing a particular task, it is the management that gathers the resources and executes the task (Jeffs, 2008). Whilst leadership emphasizes on motivating and inspiring employees, the management emphasizes on controlling and problem solving.

Most Effective Approachto Manage Subordinates

A wide-range of the leadership approaches would help business managers in managing the subordinates but their success would majorly depend on the ability of the business manager to choose a suitable approach. The business manager can make use of the leadership approaches such as transformational leadership, people-oriented leadership, and bureaucratic leadership depending on the circumstances and situation (Kaiser et al, 2008). Transformational leadership approachwill be highly effective during the times of change (Jeffs, 2008). When a change is implemented, employees will normally show aversion to adopt new things or new operational environment. In order to eliminate the aversion among employees, transformational leader will try to pass on his enthusiasm to the subordinates to ignite their zeal to increase the productivity. The transformational leadership can be adopted by business managers when the organization has re-engineered the operational environment by implementing Enterprise Resource Planning application (Lynch, 2009).

The bureaucratic leadership approach would be suitable for organizational settings that emphasize on employees following the pre-established procedures and norms (Kaiser et al., 2008).This leadership style should be used at the time when the organization has been doing perfectly with the help of existing processes. As existing procedures are perfectly working out, the bureaucratic leader just ask his or her subordinates to follow the instructions precisely to achieve a goal. Finally, the autocratic approach emphasizes on controlling the actions of employees with the help of continuous monitoring to ensure that they follow strict guidelines(Kaiser et al., 2008). This approach would be helpful in organizational settings where the employee motivation and achievement-orientation are very low, employees feel reluctant to take-up responsibilities and team consists of the inexperienced team members.

The above discussion clearly shows that the point of view suggested by CMI 2013 is perfect for today’s business environments. If the organization sticks to only one leadership or management approach, it would not be able to sustain in the long-run. The business managers need to change the way they manage the subordinates depending on the situation and circumstances.

The two leaders that fit the idea of leadership approach suggested by CMI are Andy Street, the CEO of John Lewis and Mark Price, the CEO of Waitrose. These two leaders majorly emphasize on the mid-level managers representing their branches or departments and share their opinions to the top management while developing the strategies. In simple terms, these leaders are using a democratic leadership approach wherein the employees are involved in the decision making process. The feedback provided by these mid-level managers would help the top management to understand the issues faced by the employees in each department and come-up with the right solution. Apparently, John Lewis and Waitrose are highly successful organizations under the leadership of Andy Street and Mark Price respectively.

If I am member of the team, I would expect my manager to follow the democratic leadership approach which emphasize on creating open environment wherein ideas move freely among the group. The team members should be given an opportunity to discuss about the concerns and issues by sitting across the table along with the managers. Since the participation in decision making makes the employees to commit for what they have agreed upon the discussion, they would take the responsibility to carry out the tasks and be accountable for the results (Lynch, 2009).

On a whole, there is no single approach that helps managers in leading people. They should keep on changing the leadership and management approaches depending on the situation and circumstances. Selection of a suitable management approach is considered to be a first step towards the success of the organization.

References

Jeffs, C., 2008. Strategic Management. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., p. 29

Kaiser, R. B., Hogan, R., and Craig, S. B., 2008.Leadership and the Fate of Organizations.American Psychologist, 63(2), 96.

Lynch, R., 2009.Strategic Management (5^th Edition). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall